Visual Neuroaesthetics (VisNA) Lab

What does it mean for a painting to fill us with wonder, for a sunset to be beautiful or for a film to move us? Why do some visual experiences have the power to reach inside and grab us, while others leave little impression? How can we measure these experiences scientifically?

In the VisNA Lab, we study the psychological and neural basis of aesthetic experiences, such as when a person is aesthetically “moved” by visual art, poetry, architecture, music, or natural landscapes. Much of our research relies on brain imaging (fMRI, EEG) and behavioral techniques. We also frequently use computational tools (e.g. machine learning), measurements of physiology and eyetracking.

Our core research areas are:

Identifying the central cognitive and emotional processes that underly aesthetic experiences and the interacting neural systems that support them.

Characterizing the conditions that lead to “shared taste” across a population of individuals in different aesthetic domains.

Development of methods for studying aesthetic experiences in more naturalistic settings such as museums and performance halls.

Team Leader

PhD Candidate

PhD Candidate

As suggested by the many singing contests and music programs in the media, the singing voice attracts ample attention. Recent studies showed that lay and expert listeners share similar definitions of what is “correct” when listening to untrained ...

How does the brain support aesthetic experiences with visual stimuli such as artwork, landscapes, architecture, dance or movies? Finding a painting to be aesthetically moving involves a change away from the typical behavior ...

Individuals can be aesthetically engaged by objects from widely different visual aesthetic domains, such as paintings, mountain vistas, or buildings. The goal of this project is to understand whether aesthetic appreciation of different visual ...

Adult liking judgments for visual scenes are strongly influenced by the semantic content of images, more so than by lower-level visual features (e.g. the presence of specific colors or line types). This results in a strong degree of shared taste ...

Moments of creative inspiration are critical pivot points that mark the transition from creative ideation to actualization of an idea. We hypothesize that the state of being aesthetically moved, a critical moment during ...